Turnitin

Overview

Turnitin (also known as Turnitin.com) is an Internet-based plagiarism-detection service used by the university for students to check student-submitted documents for plagiarism

How do I know if Turnitin is enabled?

You will notice that Turnitin has been enabled for your assignment if you see this icon next to the folder.

How do students submit assignments to a Turnitin-enabled Dropbox folder in Desire2Learn?

There is no difference in the user experience for submitting files to Turnitin-enabled Dropbox folders versus regular Dropbox folders. Files are submitted by uploading a file. When the file is submitted, the the file is also submitted to the Turnitin server for processing.

How do I review the Original Report from Turnitin?

When a file is submitted and being processed by the Turnitin server, the Dropbox folder will show the submission with a status of "In-Progress". When D2L identifies that an Originality Report is available, the status changes to a graphic indicating the Originality Score. This graphic can be clicked to launch the Originality Report in a new window for viewing. If specified at the time of Dropbox folder creation, the same graphic will be exposed on the submitting user's view of the Dropbox submission.

Submitting Assignments

There is no difference in the user experience for submitting files to Turnitin-enabled Dropbox folders versus regular Dropbox folders. Files uploaded to Turnitin-enabled Dropbox folders are automatically submitted to the Turnitin server for processing, during which time the Dropbox folder will show the submission with a status of "In-Progress".

Reviewing Reports

If your instructor has enabled access to view the report for your assignment from Turnitin, you can check the status of your file after it has been processed by the system. Make sure to allow at least fifteen minutes for your file to be processed.

After it is processed, to view the report:

Go to Dropbox and scroll down to the folder to which you have submitted your assignment.

On the right is the submissions column, displaying the number of files you have submitted. Click on the number to view your files and the report.

When the system is done processing the file and D2L identifies that an Originality Report is available, the status changes to a graphic indicating the Originality Score with a percentage and color.

Click on the graphic to launch the Originality Report in a new window for viewing. If specified at the time of Dropbox folder creation, the same graphic will be exposed on the submitting user's view of the Dropbox submission.

You will be prompted to accept a user agreement at the Turnitin website, and then can view your Originality Report.

REMEMBER: You can only see the Originality Report if your Instructor has enabled the function. In the sample above, the Turnitin system believes that this paper is 7% plagiarized

Understanding the Originality Score

The Originality Score (graphic in the Reports column), displays a color and percentage indicating the amount of matching content.

A lower percentage rating indicates that most of the content is original; a higher percentage rating indicates that much or all of the content matches content found in other sources.